


From This Viewing Lens

by Lee_of_io



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Body Horror, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Memory Loss, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-02-18 15:24:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18702310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lee_of_io/pseuds/Lee_of_io
Summary: It was later, during quiet moments, that Venom would share to him the horrors they faced during that time; completely powerless to protect him and forced to watch his slow degradation.  It had been the Symbiote’s quick thinking that had saved Eddie from becoming all but a hollow shell.Eddie and Venom are successfully captured by Drake's men and brought back to the Life Foundation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline on this fic is a little screwy, so really this is kind of just an AU. Just know for sure that Dr. Skirth is alive and Riot is not currently in the picture. Other than that, the continuity is fuzzy enough to make this story at least somewhat work with the events of the movie.

Eddie stared down at the tray of food that had come sliding under the hatch and into the cell.

 

He wasn’t entirely sure why they continued this monotonous routine of having him stand at the opposite end of the tiny glass enclosure while his meals were delivered. The threat of high-frequency alarms going off if he so much as sneezed in the direction of the hapless security guard conveying the sad tray to him was more than enough of a deterrent.

 

Plus, he wouldn't risk rations being cut for ‘bad behavior’ as Drake liked to call it.

 

Among the usual servings of meat (still raw and bloody, the way they liked it), what appeared to be a whole bar of chocolate (no doubt a treat snuck to them by Dr. Skirth), and a generous mix of different vegetables (also Dr. Skirth’s idea, unfortunately. Her insistence that they needed basic human nutrition on top of their altered diet was their least favorite topic of conversation during daily socialization.), there was some kind of fluffy off white substance. He wasn’t sure what it was.

 

**_Potatoes. Just pulverized and without intact flesh._ **

 

Strange. He wasn’t sure he liked the sound of it.

 

_Do we like potatoes?_

 

He was careful to keep his expression neutral as he spoke internally to his other. That last thing he needed was to be questioned by the lab staff. They didn’t know the extent of the connection he shared with Venom, assuming that the Symbiote was merely an instinct-driven animal, just with the benefit of being extraterrestrial in nature.

 

**_We like potatoes. Tater tots come from potatoes._ **

 

The sensation of the Symbiote recalling a memory and showing it to Eddie washes over him like a cooling balm. In it, a man Eddie only logically recognizes as himself (with more energy, a healthier bulk to his frame, and, even in the recognizable flush of illness, substantial color in his cheeks) rips open a frozen bag of food and pours the contents directly into his mouth. He snorts with amusement and tucks into his dinner with a residual hunger born from the memory; now eager to see if the potato product on his tray was as good as Venom’s recollection.

 

It wasn’t, but that was hardly a surprise.

 

 _That wasn’t in the lab,_ he thinks to his other as he eats, scooping up the individual pieces of food with the use of an elongated, prehensile tongue and chewing thoughtfully. _That was from before? When we first met?_

 

**_Yes._ **

 

No more is said on the matter. Eddie knows that Venom carries a lot of complicated feelings about the time before their shared imprisonment; regret, happiness, hope for an optimistic future, a humorous cheer that they still found the will to indulge in every now and again in between moments of hurt.

 

Eddie wishes, not for the first time, that he could give his other at least a modicum of the solace that they deserved.

 

They’d both been subject to ‘experiments’ at the hands of Drake, the Life Foundation science team, and the rotating cast of abusers who carried the power-trip position of security personnel.

 

Treece had made it a personal point to make sure Eddie remembered his name.

 

In those early days, the head of security would casually strike him repeatedly, one-handed with a cattle prod, while his other rested upon the trigger of the sound alarm should at any point Venom chosen to retaliate in their host’s defense. At one point, this abuse alone was not enough to satisfy the man and he used a sledgehammer to methodically break Eddie bones, working from the edges of his limbs inward. During this particularly sadistic torture, Treece triggered the alarm anytime it became evident that Eddie’s Symbiote other made an attempt to repair the mangled contorted extremities, until between writhing and screaming through retching sobs Eddie had begged Venom to stop for both their sakes. Only after Treece grew physically tired of swinging the hammer, he called in a subordinate, and then another. When he finally grew bored of the repetitive nature of the twisted punishment, he walked out, allowing Symbiote and host a moment of peace the pull themselves back together by the sickening wet _pops_ of flesh and bone.

 

Drake allowed this abuse half out of a smug satisfaction at seeing Eddie hurt and a genuine interest in the speed and efficiency of a Symbiote influenced healing factor. He made sure to shared this all with Eddie, as if the man’s vitriolic indulgences were an inside joke at Eddie’s expense. Eddie wasn’t completely sure what he did to piss the guy off, but he was sure that whatever the insult had been, it wasn’t worth this kind of overt retaliation.

 

It was only after Venom had finally snapped and massacred half the occupants of an operating room (that had been subjecting Eddie to various gratuitously unnecessary procedures such as electroconvulsive therapy, vivisection, and the application of various corrosive acids to sensitive bodily tissues), that the team of scientists had decided that a more mindful approach to further research would need to be exercised. Unfortunately, that meant a number of experimental drug therapies.

 

That signaled the beginning of the end.

 

Eddie’s memory loss had come on so gradually that, between each new terrifying round of induced hallucinations and the waking and sleeping terrors that followed, lucidity was hard enough to pinpoint let alone any introspection into his own mental state.

 

When everything was agonizing, it was hard to focus on anything other than the pain.

 

The frustrating part was that he could feel it all slipping away between the thrashing fits and the spiraling breathless panic as each new cocktail of chemical agents were injecting into his veins. He knew that he should remember certain details, specific interactions, the faces and names of people that were once important to him, even little things like recognizing whether or not he’d ever encountered a _fucking potato_ at any goddamned point in his life. But one-by-one, indiscriminately, the memories of his life fled him as the ‘medicines’ they forced on him drilled holes through his mind.

 

To add insult to injury, this very result was what Drake had hoped for. Eddie and Venom were the only currently viable symbiosis between human and alien, and that made them indispensable. But Drake felt that Eddie was too much of a liability, a wild card that had been underestimated too many times and, as a result, act out too often. Drake was hoping that once Eddie was all but scrubbed clean of his identity, then the human-symbiote hybrid would be much more controllable, and therefore of much more use to him.

 

The man confided to Eddie that once his scientists were able to fully understand what made the bond between the two of them so strong, the results could then be better replicated, and then Eddie himself would be obsolete and the Symbiote inside him would ultimately be placed in a different host.

 

For all his bravado, it was doubtful that Drake’s scientists were all that close to a breakthrough, given the effort they put into Eddie various ‘treatments’. Regardless of this logic, Venom had been shaken by the prospect.

 

It was later, during quiet moments, that Venom would share to him the horrors they faced during that time; completely powerless to protect him and forced to watch his slow degradation. It had been the Symbiote’s quick thinking that had saved Eddie from becoming all but a hollow shell. Venom ran through Eddie’s remaining memories, collected, and saving what they could. They acted almost like an external hard drive in that their very biomass became a shared mental storage for the pair.

 

This level of intimate connection was not without drawbacks. In order to maintain this extreme symbiosis, Venom explained, the two of them had become bonded to such a complete degree that at this point, separation would likely cause permanent damage to the Symbiote but would undoubtedly prove fatal to the human half of the pair.

 

Armed with this grime knowledge, Eddie, in a moment of severe duress under the influence of some horrible amphetamine psychosis in which he felt like he was drowning in live ants, had made the mistake of begging Venom to break the bond and leave him. More than anything during that episode, he’d wanted a way out.

 

Venom was, understandably, hurt by this. So much so that the Symbiote spent the better half of a day curled deep inside Eddie without a word. It was only after Eddie’s voice was raw from endless apologizing and pleading with his other to _just speak to him once more_ that the silence was broken. Many insecurities, moments of disbelief, and heartfelt reconciliation ran the gamut between the pair and wrung them dry.

 

As they both subsisted in a silence that ached like an exposed nerve, Eddie pulled himself together enough to ask why it was Venom never chose to jump ship and catch a ride on any number of scientists or guards that made contact with him daily. Moving from host to host, it would be easy to escape, and yet, Venom clung to Eddie like the human was a piece of driftwood in a vast and empty sea.

 

Venom stated simply, but a little sheepishly, that it was because Eddie viewed the alien as his equal, partner, ‘other’. Because Eddie wanted this bond as much as they did. Because the two of them had fallen into the dynamic of a team, and then something altogether so much more than a team even before being imprisoned. The very prospect of having a host that wanted them in return was an anomaly that they’d never dared to hope for. Eddie, merely by existing and accepting Venom as a partner, had given them more than anyone else in had in their many millions of years of life. And they weren’t about to let that go.

 

So when Eddie all but begged for Venom to be the instrument by which Eddie committed suicide in such a way the tainted the very nature of their bond’s trust, it was an anguish and betrayal the likes of which they’d never known before. How could they have known it? Eddie was the one and only host that had ever let them in, so to then be shut out violently, to feel like Eddie was suggesting that he’d rather die with the bond ripped apart than to continue on was heartbreaking.

 

Eddie apologized until he the words ‘ _I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, please, I never meant it like that_ ’ became abstract shadows of their former meaning. Venom, in turn, apologized. They knew from Eddie’s own memories and the disheartening downward spiral of Eddie’s thoughts during the course of imprisonment that the human was susceptible to negative emotional states due to past and present traumas. They had assumed the worst of their host and shut themself away without offering Eddie any solace for hours, and that had led to a lot of physical and emotional stress for him.

 

In a moment of raw vulnerability, his other wondered if Eddie resented the bond they shared. If they’d never come into his life, Eddie would be living a normal human existence, free from the rending torture at the hands of his own kind. It was because of Venom that Eddie had been robbed of a normal life.

 

This confession, shared so earnestly and remorsefully by the Symbiote, damn near broke Eddie’s heart. He assured his other, as best he could, that the only thing that he would never regret was their bond. He only wished that it didn’t result in Venom’s imprisonment alongside Eddie. He knows now that the request to break the bond had been a horrible mistake, but he’d only wished for it out of a desire to free Venom from his residual pain.

 

In the dim light of the shutdown lab, locked up tight for the night and out of the prying eyes of the roving security guards, Venom manifested a portion of their form. Just enough to offer a comforting embrace which Eddie leaned into in the shadows of his cell. They both apologized, and they promised they’d try to do better next time and never let misunderstandings divide them again.

 

They hardly dwelled on the incident at this point though. Any real possibility of escaping the lab had been dismissed long ago, whether separately or united.

 

Now, the two of them focused on surviving, if only because each new day was one more they shared together.

 

Symbiote and host both jumped slightly, drawn from their shared musings as a gentle rap at the glass entrance to their cell sounded out.

 

“All done with your meal, Eddie? Ready to start our session?” Dr. Skirth smiled kindly at him from the other side of the door, a notepad and pen in hand.

 

Eddie smiled in return, but without any of the sympathy that bled through the scientist’s carefully sculpted expressions. Dr. Skirth recognized that she was a least somewhat culpable from his current state, but unlike everyone else in this facility, Eddie would never dream of holding it against her.

 

Testimony to this surety established between scientist and subject was the fact that Dr. Skirth was the only one who could safely enter the glass enclosure and join Eddie inside.

 

Eddie made sure to stand still and as non-threatening as possible as the scientist was buzzed into the cell, not for her sake so much as for the trigger-happy guards watching the whole process with a critical eye.

 

“Did you get my treat?” She only just cleared the closing door before asking with a conspiratorial smile. “I make sure to clear it past security, but you know how they get.”

 

Oh, Eddie knew. It had been an uphill battle for Dr. Skirth to prove to the rest of the science team as well as to Drake that Eddie and the Symbiote were in danger of serious malnutrition, and even possible death, due to a lack of the chemical phenylethylamine in their diet despite the indisputable evidence supporting her claims. It didn’t help that many of the drugs administered to him left him nauseous and often unable to keep down the nutrient slop they’d been giving him. For a time, Symbiote and host had been in just as much danger of starvation as they were of being terminated in any other random assortment of physical abuses. Despite their corrected diet, Eddie still was a haggard imitation of the man in Venom’s memories.

 

His other admitted sheepishly later that they’d resorted to consuming Eddie’s spleen and select portions of his liver in order to survive the worst of the hunger. Eddie wasn’t sure why the Symbiote had seemed so ashamed of this necessary act; except that perhaps it had been a subject of much contention to his alien other, and thus one of the many topics that were best avoided.

 

“Yes, I got that chocolate.” Eddie tried to make up for the hoarse whisper with which he addressed the scientist with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Thank you.”

 

Perhaps that was a residual product of his previous life, the need to set others at ease. More likely, it was something he reserved for Dr. Skirth. She was the only one who listened to him and made small attempts (within her power) to alleviate some of his pain. At one point, Venom mused softly that it had been because of her that Eddie and Venom found each other. That endeared the scientist all the more to him, even if he couldn’t himself recall the specifics of his meeting with his other.

 

Of course, like all things within the lab walls, this friendliness and tentative trust between the scientist and subject was to be exploited for Drake’s gain. Dr. Skirth was assigned as Eddie’s handler (of sorts) and was the one who was to administer each new component of his ‘therapy’.

 

It had become routine. They would talk, however long or short as needed, about any side effects of the last solutions that how been feed into his bloodstream. Did Eddie notice anything different from the last batch? What would usually follow would be a brief cognition test to see how his mental faculties were holding up. After that, if there was nothing else for Eddie to report, Dr. Skirth would administer his next dose of ‘medicine’. Sometimes it was a continuation of the last or a slight variant. The worse was when it was something entirely new.

 

“How did you do yesterday with the third type variant of the GABA enhancement? Did it help at all?” Even before Eddie spoke the scientist was already jotting down notes in continuous lines.

 

“I don’t know, maybe? I had—“ and here he cut himself off to confer with his other.

 

**_Two._ **

 

“—two seizures yesterday,” he finished lamely, hoping his brief beat of silence wasn’t too obvious.  It was sometimes hard to remember the details when each day was more or less the same at this point.  It was physically and emotionally exhausting.

 

The scientist, however, had come to know Eddie and his other fairly well at this point because without skipping a beat she said, almost shyly, “Hi, Venom.”

 

She lowered her notebook after a moment of consideration, a tense look passing over her features before she came to some internal conclusion. “How is Venom? Do they have any insight into your condition to add?”

 

This surprised Eddie. He tried to never go into detail back his other during these sessions as the risk of whoever was watching the security cameras or was waiting just past the glass walls taking an interest was too great a risk. Everyone knew whom ‘Venom’ referred to; Eddie had screamed the name in moments of pain and delirium too often to deny that the word held the deeper association of a name. Even still, no one pursued that matter. As they saw it, a name did not give something sentience. And Eddie was careful not to dispute this assumption in any obvious way.

 

Dr. Skirth always seemed to know better, as if her insight into the situation was born from more than the same base observations as her peers. Eddie liked to think that was what made her good at her field.

 

Still, while subtly hinting that she knew more about Venom than Eddie let on, she had never outright addressed the Symbiote so bluntly as she was right now. Why? Even if she was working off intuition, it was clear she’d never shared her hypothesis with Drake. Why risk the suspicion of fraternizing with a dangerous test subject?

 

**_Tell her that we are well, Eddie. That your system has been stabilized from yesterday._ **

 

Even if he was apprehensive about Dr. Skirth’s motives, he would never doubt Venom.

 

“All good here. Much better than yesterday. I think I’m growing a tolerance to this last batch. Even with the fits, I had a particularly boring day.” Boring being his way of blithely stating that he hadn’t suffered any hallucinations. Eddie suspected that if he, alone, had been given any one of these drugs, let allow combinations of them in varying and excessive doses, without Venom tell help to reduce the effects, he would have died long ago. As it was, at least he didn’t have to worry about withdrawal syndromes.

 

“Perhaps then we should move on to something else. Just a mild dose of a new compound.” Dr. Skirth seemed to choose her words carefully, as if weighing each.

 

It struck Eddie as doubly odd as the scientist began pulling equipment out of her lab coat. She normally took full advantage of the time they had during these talks. For her to rush right into administering his next treatment was surprising, if not a bit disheartening. Maybe Drake had grown annoyed at the friendly rapport between scientist and subject, as terse and guarded in professionalism as it was. Maybe she had been rebuked or even threatened.

 

A rolling growl of animalistic anger washed over him in waves at the prospect; it was a rage that both he and his other shared in equal measure. The scientist before them was the only tether of the human connections they had left. If it wasn’t for her kindness and her willingness to stand up in his defense, Eddie would have given up on humanity a long time ago and embraced the monstrosity they saw in him.

 

He offered up his arm with only slight hesitation. The swipe of alcohol swab disinfecting the crook of his elbow was one of the few times he felt like a piece of him was clean between pressure hose showers every other day and the excessive sweating brought on by feverish symptoms.

 

He hardly noticed the bite of a needle sliding beneath his skin, Venom numbing the sensation, even as small as it was. Venom couldn’t always numb his pain. A restrictive diet meant the Symbiote had to prioritize which aspects of Eddie’s overall health needs were most urgent, and thus repair often took precedence over pain management. But this small act in a placid moment of mild discomfort meant the world to Eddie. He had the overwhelming urge to press a thankful kiss to the inky biomass of his other, but given the circumstances and present company, that was not possible.

 

 ** _You are most welcome, Eddie_** rumbled through him instead, a slight amusement and tender affection layered throughout.

 

Before he even registered movement, Dr. Skirth was withdrawing the needle and packing her things away. “How do you feel now?” She asked with curt nonchalance. Her movements seemed nervous and her smile forced. She was obligated to stay and monitor any immediate effects of the drugs in person for at least a couple minutes, but she seemed anxious to leave for whatever reason.

 

**_She didn’t give us anything._ **

 

_What?_

 

**_She injected us with a diluted saline solution. No drugs._ **

 

What was going on? From her skittish demeanor, Eddie could tell that this was something deliberate. But to what end?

 

However, one thing that losing the bulk of his memories had taught Eddie was to improvise. Asking too many questions led to giving away too much of his condition, better, in the long run, to play along and let situations unfold. When everything was a mystery, what was one more?

 

“I feel fine.” No, this was too common an answer, especially in the first few minutes of administration. “We both do,” he added with deliberate meaning.

 

There. He hoped that would be a satisfying enough answer to convey that both he and his other were aware that the injection was a placebo. Whatever came next would have to be an exercise in his trust of the scientist.

 

“Excellent,” she said with genuine cheer that she quickly composed into something less obvious. “I’ll just leave you to it then.”

 

She fumbled with her notebook and pen for a moment before heading to the entrance of his little glass box. The guard just beyond waited agitatedly for her to signal for exit, but she hesitated. She looked back at Eddie with a searching gaze and said with weighty words, “I hope you have a good night.”

 

With this, she made a swift exit.

 

It was impossible to parse these words beyond there base meaning, and Eddie quickly dropped the matter from his mind. If there was significance to any of this whole strange interaction it wasn’t for him to draw a conclusion now.

 

The loss of a greater portion of his mind left him with a more reactionary philosophy to most things. If answers were forthcoming, then he would just need to be patient and let them come.

 

Venom agreed and together the two of them made their way up onto the thin mattress in the corner of his glass prison and curled inward in a now instinctive action of hiding as much of himself from the security camera as possible. In the dim auxiliary lighting of the lab’s night shift, it was a simple thing for his other to surreptitiously embrace him.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Eddie. Wake up._ **

 

Reflexes honed through abuse had him awake and alert in moments. He didn’t move, trusting his other to take over and dodge him out of harm's way if a threat was imminent. No, rather, his other was palpably excited and anxious.

 

**_Eddie, the door is open._ **

 

_What?_

 

**_The door to the cell, it's open._ **

 

Sure enough, as Eddie sits upright and shifts to face the entrance to his prison, the door is slide away. Past that, a yawning gloom of residual electronic lights shapes up the greater part of the area beyond.

 

He cautiously gets to his feet, unsure if this is some kind of set up. Perhaps some new psychological torture of Drake's.

 

_When did this happen?_

**_Moments ago._ **

****

_Is there anyone around? Security coming? Can you make out any distant alarms or footfalls?_

**_No._ **

 

He can’t help a tentative hope and crushing anxiety that causes him to break out in a cold sweat. Were they free? Was this the forthcoming answer from Dr. Skirth? Was that why she made sure he would be nice and lucid tonight? Was he ready for a world beyond the lab?

 

He had only the flashes of memory that Venom had preserved as a hazy roadmap to the existence he’d lived before. Would that be enough? As it was now, they were both alien to life outside the lab.

 

As much as he hated it here, these walls were familiar, and familiarity was now something precious to him.

 

**_Done this once before. Can do even better this time. Won’t let them have us again._ **

 

That’s right. Venom had escaped once before and found Eddie as a result. That seemed promising. He had to trust his other’s words; it was that or stay here and rot.

 

His other’s confidence emboldened him.

 

With steps made firm by both their conviction, they walked past the reflective walls of their once home and out into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do a little bit of a different take on the whole "this character has amnesia" trope, so here it is.
> 
> I don't know where I'm going with this, if anywhere at all. Maybe there will be more chapters. I don't really have any set plan. Let me know your thoughts. If you want to see more, let me know. If you want to run me out of town with pitchforks and torches for continuing to hurt Eddie and Venom, well I can't blame you for that. 
> 
> (Side note for those who read my other fics, I haven't abandon GBR. I'm just taking a break until the school semester is done. Writing chapters and academic essays at the same time was killing me. This was just a tiny indulgence to get me through the week.)


	2. Chapter 2

_CCTV Security Camera Six [Time Stamp 23:10-23:14]_

_A night guard walks on screen and makes his way from one end of the outer edge of the laboratory research containment rooms toward the stairwell, walking along the circuit in a fashion that conveyed easy familiarity. As he is about halfway across the screen, about to continue on past the stairwell and bank of elevators to the cold storage rooms when something catches his attention back the way he came, causing him to whip around and brandish his light._

_The tension in his body language only grows visibly though nothing is present on screen from the high vantage point; by the beam of light cutting through the gray-scale gloom with blinding clarity. Even with the lack of audio, it is apparent that he is shouting for whatever disturbance he detected to make itself known, before he reaches for the two-way radio at his belt. He fumbles the radio and flinches back as a massive, indistinguishable form stalks on screen out of the darkness of the containment rooms; the beam of light reflecting off of amorphous demilune eyes._

_The man abandons the radio and reaches for the firearm at his belt, but before he can even extract the weapon from its holster, the form streaks across the space in a blur of movement and easily carries the night guard off-screen without breaking its momentum._

_The security footage continues on for ten agonizing seconds before a spray of blood splatters the dull surfaces of the floor and walls in stark from a source just beyond the camera’s view._

 

*

 

As the screen freezes on that last image, Dr. Dora Skirth could feel the scrambled eggs she’d eaten for breakfast that morning make a valiant effort to crawl their way back out of her stomach.

 

This wasn’t what she wanted. No one had been supposed to die. But there, staring accusingly back at her was the security camera footage of the now closed off labs, was the results of her well-intentioned efforts.

 

She entertained the notion that she’d acted too impulsively in the culmination of events leading to last night. Perhaps more time, or better planning—but no, she’d reached a point where she could no longer let things continue as they were. That, and the fact that said labs would be back to work without much of a pause steeped cynically on her conscious. Drake hadn’t let this kind of setback stop him before, and now the stakes had been raised for anyone who incurred his wrath.

 

All she could afford Eddie and Venom was their freedom; what they did with it was beyond her control. She had more pressing problems now.

 

She hoped that the look on her face telegraphed the same shock as those her colleagues managed to cultivate (not that her upset was at all manufactured, just motivated in different ways), and one that denoted guilt as the hard gaze of Carlton Drake lingered on her before sweeping to the rest of the horrified audience of the Symbiote Project team of scientists.

 

Not that it was the violence that shook them, they’d seen first hand what the Symbiotes, and specifically Venom, could and would do to human hosts and antagonizers alike, but the implications of something they’d wrought loose once more and out for blood seemed to only now sink in.

 

“That containment room was triple password encoded. Even if the subject could have escaped on its own, that doesn’t account for why the breach wasn’t immediately detected and contained. I’ve been told that all those systems seemingly experienced a mysterious, simultaneous _glitch_ last night. Would anyone like to shed some light on how this amazing set of coincidences could have occurred?” Drake’s manner was deceptively calm but his words hung suspended in the air like stalactites waiting to drop.

 

She knew he suspected her. He’d never stopped watching her, dissecting her every tick and intonation. It was enough to set her teeth on edge with constant paranoia, especially as she began to actively hatch a plan, all the time dreading the many chaotic variables of this new conspiracy and their branching outcomes.

 

But she was convinced that as far as Drake knew, there was no way she could have had access to those passwords (she had specifically not been trusted with them), to say nothing of the lack of expertise she had in hacking any kind of security system. She was biomedical chemist that had been sourced for this project straight from the life Foundations pharmaceutical study division. Compromising a security system was a far cry from her expertise in the lab, and frankly, it would have been beyond her capabilities to break Eddie and Venom out alone. Which is why she’d left the particular detail up to the people who could.

 

It had been surprisingly easy to organize. Her status as a kind of pariah of the science team had the curious effect of making her a beacon for those who hadn’t callously shed the last vestiges of their human sympathies. Either that, or many involved with the Symbiote Project viewed her near-termination (in a very literal sense) as the ominous future that they all potentially shared if Drake continued to allow his obsession to foster a growing disregard for human life. The latter seemed the more likely as no one had appeared eager to object to the deaths of nearly a dozen human test subjects before the point at which Eddie Brock had run amuck in the labs and escaped with an alien hitchhiker.

 

Drake’s emphasis to the others that she had only just managed to escape becoming another test casualty, a tactic meant to intimidate compliance, seemed to shake something loose in the priorities of her colleagues. Whatever their various reasons, Dr. Skirth found herself approached by a surprising number of anxious allies; the general hope they all shared was to discontinue this dangerous unethical spiral by removing the source of contention.

 

And so they had.

 

It was one small way she hoped to offset the pain and suffering she’d reluctantly played a part in subjecting Eddie and Venom to.

 

Bringing Eddie to the Life Foundation’s lab in the first place had been an unmitigated disaster. The only thing that had spared her life—as Drake hovered just at the doorframe of the research lab that he had isolated her inside with the violently roiling mass of the blue Symbiote—had been her desperate insistence that the knowledge she’d gained from the project would be invaluable in recapturing and further understanding the specimen.

 

And she’d lived up to that promise.

 

She hadn’t had much choice. If she had any hope of protecting her own life and those of her loved ones, she needed to repair the fragile trust Drake had in her. She needed to convince him that her dedication to the cause was reaffirmed and that she’d only doubted his methods for one impulsive moment. Additionally, the better she could reestablish herself into the Symbiote Project, the better she could ensure Eddie’s relative safety. It had been a pragmatic decision; the best-case scenario was one in which she was able to affect the most change while concealing her loyalties.

 

That did stop her from hating every moment of it.

 

With the discovery of the Symbiote intolerance to select frequencies, she and her colleagues were able to outfit Treece and his men with equipment that would emit sound to act as a neutralizing agent against the wayward specimen and host. It worked only too well, and she watched with silent dismay as video drone feed broadcast to the entirety of the Life Foundation command center the quick capture of one Eddie Brock and his alien passenger.

 

In that moment she swore to herself and Eddie (and later to Venom as she discovered the sentient nature of the Symbiote) that she would do everything she could to make up for this betrayal.

 

It was Drake who assigned her the role of observer to all of the ‘experiments’ that were to follow. Now with a viable symbiotic bond to study, all other related matters were put on hold.

 

For months she could find no refuge or recourse, both in the labs and within the waking nightmare of her mind, from the screams of suffering. The worse was when Eddie would catch a glimpse of her on the fringe of activity—horrifying cases of mutilation callously call tissue sampling, ‘experiments’ in ‘pain tolerance’, and the moments in which cruelty couldn’t be masked by some technical terminology—and call her by name, pleading for help in a strings of appeals that were only broken by screams. It could almost be considered a mercy when Eddie slowly began to show signs of lose touch with the reality around him and grew substantially more withdrawn. But the echoes of his cries still wracked her nerves and left her frayed with a hopeless guilt. It was the quiet moments where she would speak with Eddie, and by extension, Venom, in the quasi-comfort of a glass enclosure, that reminded her to stay firm in her convictions; all the time, ever vigilant for a way out. She would fix this.

 

She only once broke her composure so totally that she couldn’t keep from confronting Drake and adamantly objecting to this show of needless cruelty. Perhaps he had been waiting for this reaction from her, because he and his security guards escorted her firmly back once more into the room where the blue Symbiote twisted listlessly about in its containment unit. It wasn’t the promised death sentence, but a reminder to ‘carefully consider’ her priorities.

 

There, sitting and watching the Symbiote for the greater length of the day, She had come to an impasse.

 

If there was to be any hope of saving any more lives, Eddie, Venom, herself, and her loved ones, from the danger she had inadvertently ensnared them all in, she would need to stop waiting for an opportunity to arise and set out to make one. She had tentative allies, now she needed a plan and an array of contingency plans. And once the plan was enacted, she would need to be ready for the fallout.

 

And, she considered wryly while listening to the gentle _tap!-tap!_ of semi-regular viscous adhesion to glass, she could really use some help with all this.

 

* * *

 

 

One aspect of working closely with Eddie was the shift in her understanding of just what the Symbiotes were and what each needed to survive.

 

They weren’t, as Drake seemed to assume, base organisms with no more complex directives than the sole need to occupy a host to process oxygen and nutrients, but rather, they were sentient creatures with cognitive capabilities and personalities seemingly parallel to humanity. This only served to compound her horrified guilt as the seemingly innocuous experimentation she performed on the Symbiote specimens now took on the implications of torture.

 

Through her communications with Venom, limited as it was and often channeled through Eddie via subtle questions and coded language, she was better able to make modifications to the pair’s living situation under the excuse of facilitating the Symbiote’s needs. As much as Drake hated to grant even a modicum of accommodation to Eddie Brock, he was even more reluctant to see the efforts invested into the only currently viable symbiotic human and alien pair available perish due to something as banal as poor nutrition and inadequate periods of rest.

 

In this same vein, Dr. Skirth approached the specimen labeled ‘Sym-A02’ under the guise of observation. What she had really been doing for the last month since visiting the agitated undulating alien mass was attempting to make some kind of communication.

 

The chances were slim that this attempted contact would be fruitful. From what she’d gathered from Eddie, his and Venom’s mutual bond was a considerable anomaly between Venom’s species and their chosen hosts. Apparently, more often than not, the nature of the relationship was parasitic and short-lived as a means to an end. This did not bode well. As far as she could tell, Sym-A02 fit this description of the typical Symbiote.

 

The second hiccup in her plan was the communication itself. She had no way of knowing if Sym-A02 even understood her, as the likelihood that they’d even bothered to absorb the subtleties of verbal language from their temporary hosts wasn’t high given that they wouldn’t have felt the need to engage with humans as Venom had. She had nothing to go on here.

 

Regardless, she made an effort extended the proverbial olive branch and ventured to gain some goodwill by carefully administering synthesized phenethylamine and a protein paste combined with various offal into Sym-A02’s containment unit. Not her preferred meal of choice, but the Symbiote seemed rather enthused about these culinary additions. All the while she did this, each day over the course of a month, she made sure to address the Symbiote with respect and amity, hoping that, if nothing else, the tone of her voice would convey her friendly intent.

 

Now she was out of time.

 

If Drake’s rage over this second escape, this second insult to injury that Eddie Brock managed to play on him _somehow_ once again wasn’t enough for him to send men and drones scouring the streets of San Francisco hunting the human/alien being down with extreme prejudice, he would undoubtedly take it out on the incompetent team that had let said being loose. And if the poisonous looks being sent her way were any indicator, she was his scapegoat.

 

She would rather take her chances with a relatively quick death from Sym-A02 than anything more creative that Drake might cook up. And given that she’d been witness to months and months of the sadistic shit he inflicted on Eddie, anything the alien might do to her could only be a mercy.

 

So, with this thought in mind, as soon as she could escape without drawing the attention of Drake or anyone looking to report to him and ensure that the internal witch-hunt passed them by, she slipped away. She tried to keep her composure appropriate to the situation at hand but knew that her poker face was shit under scrutiny, and so avoided eye contacted with any personnel that lingered between her and the oft-deserted end of the lab.

 

There was no avoiding the security pad that required her handprint to be scanned for entry. Security would exactly where she is if the question came up. She would have to act fast.

 

As she slipped through the entryway, she slowed to allow the door to slide back into place before continuing. She busied her hands with retrieving a bar of chocolate, one that she’d meant to give Eddie not less than twelve hours ago as a parting gift to guarantee that the pair had the energy they needed for the planned escape. She is lost in thought, turning the off-brand treat over in her hands.

 

She is startled from her momentary lapse when a dull _thud_ of biomass slaps against the containment unit in front of her, undoubtedly impatient for her to make her move. She smiles in spite of her nerves. She was careful in her work to avoid ascribing human qualities to non-humans, but she couldn’t help but read the swirling movements as the same impatience exhibited in her own children.

 

Her mood sobers up as soon as she draws closer to the unit and considers her eager audience with growing trepidation.

 

“Ok,” she breathes out with a shaky voice, “so here’s the deal.”

 

She draws a chair closer to the unit she that the attentive Symbiote is at eye level.

 

“Your friend, Venom, escaped out of here.” She had no way of knowing if Venom was indeed in good relations with Sym-A02, or if any of her words were even registering with the other, but that the least of her worries at the moment. “I’ve made sure that you’ve stayed out of sight back here, but pretty soon that’s all going to change. Inevitably they're going to make you the priority focus of research again, and that means more experimentation and more random hosts that can’t sustain you. You don’t want that and I don’t want that for you.”

 

She hoped that the gravity of her message was in some way conveyed adequately, because her life and those of many others hedged on how well this next part when. With effort, she pushed down her creeping anxiety, ever conscious of how her—their time was running out.

 

“I don’t want to die here, and I’m certain neither do you. I have no idea if I’d be a good host for you but if you can hold off on the temptation to eat me from the inside out long enough for us to find Venom, we can make sure no one puts you in a lab again.”

 

This was, hands down, the most idiotic thing she’d ever conceived of in her life. The idea that she could reason with a being that had every incentive to not only not trust her, but that could also easily hijack her body to do whatever it pleased regardless of whatever one-sided negotiations were struck here was beyond foolish. Not to mention the fact that once Sym-A02 decided they were done with her, she would be giving a potentially dangerous invasive predator free access to the whole of San Francisco’s population. Forget the unethical things that had been taking place in this lab, what she was planning to do was downright monstrous in its implications.

 

But then again, Venom had been loose now for over ten hours and, besides the single casualty of the security guard, there had been no news of a monster raging through downtown morning traffic or among the city as a whole. If there had been, undoubtedly Drake would have added that news coverage to his admonishment of the science team with the façade of some greater moral condemnation.

 

From what she’d gathered from Venom, the Symbiote wanted nothing more than to live a relatively peaceful existence with Eddie, free from harm and human interference, somewhere where the pair could rest and begin to heal. She held no illusions that Venom wasn’t dangerous in their own right, but it wasn’t in their nature to resort to true aggression without provocation. True, Venom, by self- admission, was an aberrant of their species, and thus there was no guarantee that Sym-A02 would ascribe to such a benevolent partnership with her. But she was optimistic in that the Symbiotes had proven to be beings capable of thought and reason, and so there was a frail thread of hope that all this would not end in vain.

 

Before she can second-guess the gravity of her actions any longer, Dr. Dora Skirth reaches forward to the catch on the side of the containment unit with one hand (the other still grasping the chocolate bar, now slightly melted from the heat of her worrying grasp), and with one last, “if you’re going to eat me anyway, can you at least make it quick?”, she disengages the switch.

 

The sound of the vacuum seal suction sliding open with a rush of air almost turns her stomach more than the viscous _sloshing_ of Sym-A02 emerging from the unit. Though every second in the open air must precipitate exponential degrees of pain upon the Symbiote, they appear almost wary as a tendril quests out of the central mass and reaches towards her. Dr. Skirth isn’t aware that she was holding her breath until it rushes out in a hitching gasp, a noise that causes the venturing tendril to pause briefly.

 

With a pronounced tremble in her fingers, Dr. Skirth extends her own hand toward the navy blue liquid being (this close to the Symbiote she believes that she can distinguish the faintest hint of a violet undertone beneath the blue before the ever-shifting organic fractal surface changes with the light), as flesh and blood meets biomass—and twines about her arm with a flash of movement.

 

Instinctively, Dr. Skirth recoils with a broken-off panicked yelp and flails the amassed being adhering to her arm with useless near spasmodic movements. Even as she knows that her efforts to break free are useless and that her situation is one of her own making, she can’t help the animal instinct that hammers through her chest that screams at her conflictingly to both _fight_ and _flee_.

 

**_Stop!_ **

 

She can’t help the panicked cry that escapes her lips as she registers past her blurred frenzy of movement that sends her knocking into a nearby table of instrument that the Symbiote is _inside_ her, and so was that booming voice.

 

**_Stop fighting! Breathe!_ **

 

It dawns on her that she’s lightheaded with terror and hyperventilation. She is depriving herself and thus her new passenger of much-needed oxygen. If she’s too uninhabitable, will the Symbiote decide she’s not worth the trouble and just kill her outright?

 

**_Stop thinking such things; you’re only making this harder for the both of us!_ **

 

She registers belatedly that Sym-A02 is speaking to her, directly in her head. Past the debilitating terror that has her slipping to the floor and drawing her limbs inward in an approximation of a fetal position, her scientific fascination is awakening.

 

She was making direct contact with an alien lifeform. Beyond Eddie and Venom, there had been no evidence that any of the Symbiotes had made direct attempts to communicate with their respective hosts, however briefly—

 

Her train of thought is cut off with a snarled, **_Do not compare me to that lowlife cretin._**

 

At least that cleared up the question of relations between the remaining Symbiotes.

 

“Will you help me find them at least? They and their host need our help as much as we need theirs. Once we get out of here, Drake won’t stop till either you or Venom are back in this lab.”

 

She has the disconcerting sensation of her memories being, for lack of a better word, _riffled_ though; the things she’d witnessed in the lab and the emotional turmoil she faced as she watched each new brand of torture metered out upon Eddie, Venom, and a litany of other human test subjects. Each memory is considered in rapid-fire succession before there is a pause upon the memory of Drake leading her to this very room.

She had a dizzying moment of double vision as she recalls the event from her own eyes and through the perceptions of the Symbiote audience stuck behind silent glass. They pause there and allow the memory to play out before she resurfaces back to the reality before her. The same room made a mess in her frantic efforts to escape the very fate Drake would have for her.

 

The pause is weighty in the silence, before—

 

**_A temporary alliance, perhaps._ **

 

She releases a sigh she hadn’t known she was holding in.

 

 ** _This one_** , and here a mental approximation of Drake’s face is pushed to the forefront of her mind’s eye, **_will need to be dealt with. Venom will be…useful for that._**

 

It seemed a strange thing, to be one moment go from believing with every fiber of your being, every cell screaming within the amalgamation of your body, that you are about to die, to trust the harbinger of that very doom implicitly. But here Dr. Skirth was, talking to a voice derived from the alien being inside her body—their body—no worse for wear except perhaps a couple of burses and an elevated heart rate.

 

She wasn’t dead and she and Sym-A02 were on speaking terms. That seemed like two pretty big successes in her book.

 

Now to hunt down Eddie and Venom and put this nightmare to rest.

 

“I guess we never really introduced ourselves, I feel strange calling you by a specimen designation out of force of habit.” And here she felt the strange urge to present her hand for a handshake even though she was speaking to a being not presently in front of her. “I’m Dr. Dora Skith.”

 

**_I know; I am in your head._ **

 

She feels momentarily deflated by this response before she detects a faint effervescent trill of amusement gently ripple through her from a presence she can just now pinpoint within her.

 

**_Hello, Dora. You may call me Agony._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated back and forth for much longer than was called for as to whether or not Sym-A02 (the designation given in the movie) should be Agony or some completely unrelated Symbiote. I eventually decided that if the movie can arbitrarily make Riot the antagonist, then why not include another familiar character. 
> 
> Sorry I've been so slow to update this fic. My ideas for where I feel it will eventually go a pretty nebulous at best, making the process of cutting my way through the underbrush of this plot quite the adventure and frustration. That, and my internet has been spotty as hell. But I'd love to hear all of your thoughts all the same. Thank you for bearing with me.
> 
> Next time, Eddie and Venom clueless and in the big city. Friends and foes abound.


End file.
